My Fault
by NotDoneAbusingYou
Summary: One Shot based on the Bash/Catherine scene in 'Terror of the Faithful'


Bash could never understand why Catherine preferred all of her children over her daughter Claude. She always seemed to pay so little attention to her compared to the others. As much as he could see the issues Claude had, he felt sorry for her. Speaking to Catherine was not something he was looking forward to, but he really felt that Claude might change a bit if given a chance.

As he entered Catherine's room, he expected to be tossed out the second she realized who had called on her, but she didn't. Actually, she seemed oddly okay with him being there. It unsettled him. Something seemed off about her demeanor. She spoke to him, as she stared into her bible. Her mind obviously elsewhere. Here words came as though they had open honest conversations all the time. Something was most definitely off, he just couldn't put his finger on it. He was getting uncomfortable and decided to go, but gave her a parting bit of advice, to show Claude some affection. He didn't really expect her to take his advice, but thought someone should stick up for Claude. Just as he was about to leave, the strangeness of the situation became even more apparent. Catherine walked over to her bed and sat, lifting the covers up, as though there were someone else in the bed. She was almost completely unaware of Bash's presence at this point. Bash had a terribly familiar feeling of dread. The same feeling he had the first time he realized Henry had a screw loose. This wasn't right at all. He closed the door and made a mental note to keep an eye on her. He didn't want the situation to get out of hand, and he really wasn't entirely sure what he had witnessed.

For the next few days Bash watched Catherine and her servants to see if any of their activities seemed odd. For the first day or so, everything seemed fine, but on the third day, he saw Catherine stop in the hall and it looked as though she was speaking to someone, but no one was there. He got in a little closer to see if he could hear what she was saying. He couldn't make out everything but it sounded as if she were speaking to a child. His mind flashed back to their conversation in her room. The way she was talking about her children, specifically her dead twins, could this be who she was speaking to? Only one way to find out.

"Catherine. Who are you talking to?" he said making himself known. Catherine whipped around to meet his gaze.

"You don't see them do you?" she said with an odd look on her face. "I must be going mad just like Henry. I've come to accept it over the last few weeks. There's really no other explanation. I only ask that you don't tell anyone. Francis has enough problems right now. He doesn't need another mad parent to deal with." she said. Bash cringed remembering how Francis handled it the last time. He didn't want to see Francis go through that again.

"Them? So it is Henriette and Emone that you're seeing isn't it?" he asked. Catherine nodded.

"I can't seem to shake them. I suppose it's fitting. Their death has plagued me for years...Would you do me a favor? Make sure someone takes care of me before I completely lose it. I don't want my children to see me like that." she said with a strange calmness.

"Take care of you? You mean kill you?" he said. She nodded again. "Catherine, no one is going to kill you. Something isn't right. This isn't right. You of all people. I can't believe you're really mad. Perhaps these ghosts are real. I have heard talk of a reckoning. Many are seeing spirits after the plague." he said.

"Then why can't you see them?" she said.

"Perhaps, because they don't want me to." he offered. "Maybe if you were to figure out why you are seeing them, they'd go away."

"I already know why. It's my fault they died. I couldn't protect them." she said, she pushed past Bash and continued on down the hall as he looked after her.

"Protect them from what?" He wondered.

"Never mind. I've already said too much. Please, just do as I ask and leave me be. If I am to loose my mind let me do it in peace." she said brushing past him and making her way to her room. Bash was unsure how to take what Catherine said, so he decided to continue to investigate. Maybe if he were able to solve the mystery of his half sister's deaths, he could rid Catherine of their presence and Francis would never have to find out.

Bash continued watching Catherine, and also started to have her food and wine checked for poison, just in case he was wrong about them being real spirits. He wanted to make sure all his bases were covered. He watched for days and tried to investigate the twins' death. He came up empty. All he saw was Catherine go in and out of sanity. No poison and no idea what happened to the girls. The only one of Catherine's servants who remembered anything about them, only led him to the twins' physician, who he later found out had died a short time after their mysterious death. A literal dead end.

He sucked up the courage to make another visit to Catherine. He wanted to observe her behavior again. Hoping it would give him more clues. He knocked on the door to her chambers again and was let in by her guard. When he arrived she was already in a state. She was talking to herself...or the twins. She was seated in a manner that seemed to suggest they would be sitting on her lap.

"Catherine..." he wanted to say something but didn't know what. When she realized he was there, the sight of them disappeared.

"Bash. You're back. Why do you persist with checking up on me? I asked you to leave me be." she said.

"Francis gave me the job of protecting him and his family. That's all I'm trying to do." he replied.

"Except there's no protecting me from this." she said.

"I still don't believe that. You're too strong a person to simply just go mad for no reason." he pushed.

"I suppose I should take that as a compliment." she scoffed at the idea.

"You might." he answered. She nodded her head in an odd acceptance. "The fact that you're aware of your...madness, suggests you're not, in and of itself. A mad person does not usually know they are mad."

"Oh really? Do you have another explanation?" she asked sarcastically.

"Not as of yet but..."

"Please don't. If there were another explanation, you'd of found it by now. Just...just please leave me alone." she said waiving him off. Bash found it odd that she asked him to go instead of ordering him. Almost as if she really didn't want him to go at all. However, he did as he was asked, but as he turned to leave, he noticed her wine glass sitting on the table. He'd noticed it last time as well, but thought nothing of it. Something made him wonder about it all of the sudden. He always saw it when he entered her room, but as far as he can remember, he didn't remember any of the food checkers he had checking Catherine's food reporting on the delivery of any wine to her room. Why hadn't he realized that before?

"Catherine. The first time I came to you to talk about Claude, you said you'd been indulging too much. How much of this _have_ you been drinking?" he asked

"Oh not _that_ much. Just a few extra glasses a day. I'm nowhere near drunk if that's what you're suggesting." she said. Bash picked up the bottle and sniffed it.

"I can't smell anything off. Where did it come from?" he asked.

"It was a gift sent to me from one of the villages I helped after the plague. What reason would they have to poison me?" she asked.

"They wouldn't." he said "Unless it didn't actually come from the village...I'll be back later. Don't leave this room until I return." he said leaving with the remainder of the bottle.

"Wait. What do you mean don't leave? Bash. Bash!" she called after him.

Bash took the bottle to a friend in the village who worked with herbs. He hoped that he could determine if anything had been planted in the wine. After a few tests, his friend told him that the wine had indeed been laced with hallucinogenic herbs. He assured him that without knowing what to look for, no one would have ever expected. Bash asked if there was a cure. He said he didn't need one. That as long as Catherine no longer had any contact with the herbs it would go away on it's own. With one draw back. Before it leaves your system, the hallucinations usually get worse before they get better.

"How long will it take?" Bash asked.

"It could take a few hours or it could take a few days. There's no way to know exactly." he said. "Have the patient drink a lot of water. It'll help flush it from the body faster."

"Thank you for your help."

"Good luck my friend."

Bash rushed back to the castle. When he got to Catherine's room she was at it again. This time she was standing, looking down at the two ghost children.

"I know what you want, and you can't have it." she said "I won't let you take revenge. If you want to blame someone. Blame me." Bash walked toward her carefully and laid his hand on her shoulder. Catherine didn't even flinch.

"Catherine. Catherine can you hear me?" he said.

"I know. I know what she did, but it's my fault. I didn't see it. I wasn't paying enough attention. It was _my_ fault! Not hers." Catherine continued talking to the twins, oblivious to Bash's presence.

"Catherine. Who's fault? Did someone murder your twins? Catherine?" Bash grabbed her arm and walked around to face her. She seemed to look right through him.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. I never meant for her to think I didn't love her as much. It was my fault. Please leave her alone. Leave Claude alone." she said, tears now streaming down her cheeks. Bash's eye's shot open at the revelation. Claude had killed her own sisters? That can't be.

"Catherine. Catherine." he tried shaking her a little, but she was gone. She was hysterical and she continued to babble about being sorry and it being all her fault.

Bash didn't know what to do. He couldn't simply leave her like this for god knows how long. He stared at her for a moment. He did the only thing he could think of, he held her.

"It's alright. It'll be alright." he said. He stayed there all night, alternating between holding her and trying to force her to drink water. Her visions started to move on from the twins, to Henry, to his mother and back again. All the private hurt she'd kept to herself, hidden deep inside all these years. It all started spewing out. Bash felt guilty for hearing it all. She had no idea what she was saying and would probably be mortified if she knew the things he'd heard. Through it all, Bash began to discover that Catherine wasn't the awful person he thought she was. She was actually quite the opposite. As the hours past, he began to feel her pain. Every word began to sear into his heart. He'd never known a person could go through so much and come out so strong on the other end. It's a surprise she hadn't really gone mad. He never had so much respect for a person as he did in these last few hours.

Day turned to night and back to day again. As the sun rose, Catherine was laying on her bed, hair a mess, tears staining her face. Bash sat in a chair at the foot of the bed, just watching. She'd been asleep for about two hours now, but he needed to be sure it was over before he left her. He listened to her breathing in and out. He watched as her pained expression finally turned more peaceful. Just as he was about to fall asleep himself, he heard her stir. She blinked her eye's open slowly as the sun shown in through the curtains. She raised a hand over her face to shield her eyes from the offending rays. She sat up a bit when she noticed Bash.

"Bash? What?...Why do I feel like I've been run over by a heard of buffalo? And why on gods green earth are you in my room?" she groaned out. Bash tried to hold back a chuckle. That was more like the Catherine her knew.

"You've been being drugged. I stayed here all night making sure you didn't hurt yourself." he said.

"Drugged? Who would?...wait, you were in my room all night? How dare you..."

"How dare I what? How dare I stay up all night keeping you hydrated and making sure the servants didn't hear you ranting and raving and start spreading rumors around the castle. Yes. How dare I." he said sarcastically.

"You're right...I'm sorry...I...uggg my head feels like someone shot off a cannonball inside it." she said falling back onto the bed for a second then shooting back up. "I didn't say anything suspect did I? If you know something you shouldn't, tell me now because I promise you I will find out." she tried to sound threatening, but it just wasn't working at the moment.

"I think you should be more worried about who is drugging you, than what I know." he said.

"It was probably that son-of-a-bitch Narcisse. Who else would have cause to want me out of the way. I'll worry about it later, when I can see straight." she said holding her head.

"Here drink this. It should help the headache." He said handing her a concoction he'd made up. She took it but gave him an accusing look.

"I just spent all night taking care of you. Why would I go through that just to give you more poison?" he said. She drank gleefully from the cup.

"You didn't answer me. What did I say last night?" she pushed.

"Nothing important. Babbling mostly...Now that you're free of the poison. I'll leave you to your rest." he said getting up to go.

"Thank you...I mean it." she said earnestly. He nodded and walked to the door. Then he turned again to add one more thing.

"I just want you to know. Everything that happened, It's not your fault. None of it was your fault."


End file.
